


A Fish Tale

by mldrgrl



Series: Adventures of The Lady Detective and The Writer [37]
Category: Californication (TV), The Fall (TV 2013)
Genre: F/M, Male Friendship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-26
Updated: 2017-07-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 11:09:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,578
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11622318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mldrgrl/pseuds/mldrgrl
Summary: Hank gets a visitor as he prepares for the wedding





	A Fish Tale

It was times like these that Hank wished he’d still smoked.  He’d drummed his fingers on top of the desk in Karen’s office so much that he’d even annoyed himself and he had to stop.  The piece of paper in front of him was still blank after almost an hour of trying to fill it.

 

He thought it would be easy to write his vows.  Well, not his vows, per se, but whatever one would call that part of the ceremony where the bride and groom might want to say something about each other.  He had so many things he wanted to say, but they just wouldn’t come out.  Part of the problem might be that for one of the first times in his life, he held what he felt for Stella as something sacred and something private.  God knows when it came to the other women in his life, especially Karen, he was known to overshare.

 

Maybe the difference was how reserved Stella was to begin with.  He had coaxed her out of her shell through the years, but she had also taught him the benefits of privacy.  There were things that only the two of them knew, things that he didn’t even tell Karen about, and he was known to tell Karen  _ everything _ , and that made him feel more bonded with her than anyone else.  Still, he felt compelled, and the empty piece of paper mocked him.

 

Desperate for a diversion, he searched Karen’s desk for something to toy with.  He found a neon green Bic lighter at the bottom of one of the drawers and his spirits brightened in the hopes he might find a loose cigarette to go with it.  No such luck.  Even the lighter was old and useless, barely giving off a few sparks when he tried to fire it up.  The impatience of it all sort of made him wish he’d invited Charlie after all.  Charlie could always come up with a distraction, though their influence on each other was the very reason he didn’t want his little folically challenged friend around today.

 

There was a knock on the frame of the open door behind him and Hank spun around in his chair to see Fish wearing a wide grin and a hideous red and white Hawaiian shirt.  The Trout was probably the last person in the house he wanted to see, but he still welcomed the distraction.

 

“Fish,” Hank said, flicking the sparkwheel of the lighter in his hand with his thumb, trying in vain to release his pent up anxiety.

 

“Hank, my man,” Fish answered.  The enthusiasm in the greeting was grating to Hank.

 

“What’s up?”

 

“Beckster traded the rings with your lovely lady.”  Fish tossed a small jewelry box at Hank which he caught with his left hand.

 

“Thanks.”

 

Fish strutted over to the other side of the room and stretched as he looked out the window.  Hank turned slowly to watch him, his thumbnail scratching lightly at the two tiny hinges on the jewelry box.  His ring finger had been itching since he'd taken his ring off and given it to Becca.  He wondered if Stella felt just as odd without hers as he did.  It has so quickly become a part of him.

 

“Gorgeous day,” Fish said.  “You picked a good one.”

 

Hank made a noise of agreement and Fish moved away from the window to take a seat on the other side of the desk across from Hank.

 

“Karebear sent me in to make sure you weren't shittin’ bricks,” Fish said.

 

“Nerves of steel,” Hank answered.

 

“That’s good.  I wouldn’t want to have to slap some sense into ya.”

 

“Why, Fish, I didn't know you liked me like that.”

 

“I’ll go tell Karebear you’re cool as a cucumber.”  

 

Fish rose part way up from his chair, but Hank waved him back down.  He toyed with the lighter again and then dropped it onto the desk to open up the jewelry box and look at Stella’s ring.  He touched the little diamonds with a reverence that made his chest swell.  The box snapped shut with a little click when he closed his hand into a fist.

 

“I wanted to write something for Stella,” Hank said.  “Something to say before we make our vows.”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I just can’t...I can’t seem to think right now.”

 

“You want to hear about my grandparents?”

 

“Not really.”

 

“Married 62 years.  Happy as fuckin’ clams.  Five kids.  My dad was the second in line a year after my Aunt Pam.”

 

“Is there an exam later?  Should I write this down?”

 

“You’re a real wiseass, Moody.”

 

“So I’ve been told.”  Hank set the jewelry box down on the desk and sat back in his chair, lacing his fingers together at the back of his head and and closing his eyes.  “Go ahead.  You were planting the seeds of the Fish family tree for me.  Aunt Pam, followed by dear old dad.”

 

“Three years in, my grandpops gets called up to serve.”

 

“World War II?”

 

“Yep.  Navy.  Spent most of his service in the Pacific Islands, but never saw combat.  His unit built airfields and roads and hospitals.  He spent exactly 34 months away from grandma and my dad and Aunt Pam and to hear him talk about it, you’d think it was 34 years.”

 

“I’m sure it was rough.”

 

“He was a poet.  Not professionally or anything like that, but he was a poet at heart.  He wrote my grandma a poem every day he was away from her.  One thousand twenty-six of them altogether.”

 

“Your grandmother kept them?”

 

“Oh, sure.  Pasted them into a couple scrapbooks that my aunt Pam inherited.”

 

Hank opened his eyes and blinked up at the ceiling.  “Sorry, Fish, but I’m afraid I’ve missed the point.”

 

“I haven’t made it yet.”

 

“Oh.”

 

“When he got back home, he asked my grandma did she get the poems and she said yes.  He asked, did you like them and she confessed she never read them.  He asked her why she never read the told her he had written her one every day so that she would know how much he loved her.  She told him she already knew how much he loved her because he wrote her every day, not because of what he wrote.”

 

“That was a very roundabout way of telling me that actions speak louder than words.”

 

“I teach by example.”

 

“It’s actually a beautiful story.  Is it true?”

 

“I can take you over to my Aunt Pam’s place to read the journals.”

 

“Journals?”

 

“Every year on their anniversary, grandpops would give grandma a new journal of the poems he’d written throughout the year.  She passed away a few years before him, but he still filled the pages.”

 

Hank actually felt a little choked up at the end of Fish’s story.  He could be a real sucker for romance like that.  Hadn't he spent most of his life looking for a love like that?  He thought he had it with Karen once upon a time, and then he didn't.  When he really reflected on his time with her, what they'd had was a lot of passion and drama with extreme emotional highs and lows.  What he had with Stella was more balanced.  There was passion, to be sure, but their daily life was more even keeled.  He always thought calm meant boring, but calm actually felt safe and warm and lovely.  

 

“Have you ever read any of the poems?” Hank asked.

 

“Nah.  Didn't seem right.”

 

Hank nodded in agreement.  He was curious as hell to see what could come out of someone on a day to day basis like that.  It was the only thing that he found truly daunting sometimes about getting married - what if one day you discover there's absolutely nothing left to discover?  Then what?  Maybe those poems were Fish’s grandfather’s reminder of what once was.  Or maybe he really did have something new to say every day.  It was a nice thought.  

 

“Well, I'll get out of your hair,” Fish said.  He stood, stretched, and then came over to clap Hank on the shoulder.  “You're a good dude, Moody.  Even if you're a wiseass.”

 

“Thanks, Fish.”

 

After Fish left, Hank stared at the blank paper in front of him again.  He picked up a pen and poised it over the first line.  ‘Stella,’ he wrote.  What followed was a stream of consciousness that, as a narrative, completely lacked cohesion and form.  His disjointed thoughts tumbled out, one after the other, so that a sentence like ‘I realized I loved you when I didn't want to let go of your hand or go back to New York,’ was followed by ‘Do you remember when you dripped duck sauce on your thigh and let me lick it off?’

 

His hand cramped and he filled six pages before there was another knock on the door and Becca came up behind him.

 

“Sun is starting to set,” she said.  “Mom told me to come get you.”

 

Hank looked at his messy, smudged pages and ink stained hand.  He didn't know where the time had gone.  He thought he would have more time.  He wanted to shower and change and revise his pages and he still wasn't quite finished.

 

“Dad?” Becca asked.

 

“Yeah, I’ll…”  He stopped, panic racing through his bloodstream and making him sweat.  He didn’t know what to say, but he wasn’t ready.

 

The End

 


End file.
